I just got Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's 2004 book, What's Right with Islam (the tome that layed the groundwork for the interfaith cleric's Cordoba mosque initiative), from the library. Here's what the imam has to say vis-a-vis how Islam and America's Declaration of Independence, for heaven's sake, are muy simpatico:

What's right about America is its Declaration of Independence, for it embodies and restates the core values of the Abrahamic, and thus also the Islamic, ethic. Since human liberty is one of its aims, and reason the method by which we justify our political order, then the cardinal moral truths from the Declaration of Independence that flesh out the Abrahamic ethic are:

That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness--that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed.

As defined by our rights, we are equal; no one human being has rights superior to those of other human beings. We are born with these rights; we do not get them from anyone or any government. Indeed, the opposite is the case: whatever rights government has come from us, the governed, by our consent. And our right to the pursuit of happiness implies that each one of us has the right to live our lives as we wish--to pursue happiness as we think best--provided only that we respect the equal rights of others to do the same and do not infringe on their rights in this regard/ America's founders thus outlined the moral foundations of a free society--and in the process, an Abrahamic society. These beliefs are fundamental to all Americans and may be said to constitute the American "religion" or creed that all Americans subscribe to and believe in. The are also beliefs fundamental to all Muslims, who regard these beliefs as essential to Islam.

You can see why Rauf was such a hit on the interfaith cirucuit--because he pushed appealing bromides about a fellowship of the "Abrahamic" (which, incidentally, is an entirely Islamic fabrication that was picked up by interfaith-minded Christians and Jews; I learned that from Mark Durie's excellent book The Third Choice).

As for the truth: Daniel Pipes captures it very well, I think, in the October issue of Commentary:

Sharia contradicts the deepest premises of Western civilization. The unequal relations of Muslims and kafir cannot be reconciled with equality of rights. A sovereign God cannot allow democracy.

Flo Rida's “Club Can't Handle Me” blares through the Air Canada Centre as 18,000 fists pump into the air. It's part of the We Day dance, and once the choreographed set of movements is done, the arena explodes into cheers as the Toronto brothers and founders of Free The Children, Marc and Craig Kielburger, take the stage.

The international children's-rights activists are challenging Canadian youth to become “shameless idealists” just like them.

The day-long event kicks off the We Schools in Action program, in which students develop and implement one local and one global project to help youth who do not have access to the basic things we often take for granted: food, clean water and education.

The lead singer of Hedley, Jacob Hoggard, shared stories from his recent trip to Kenya. He said that while it may be hard for young Canadians to imagine, poverty exists and young people can make a difference.

“I wasn't just watching a commercial on television anymore,” Hoggard said. “I know that it's easy not to pay attention. We're so desensitized by everything that goes on in our culture, but I'm here to tell you guys today that it's real.”

Best-selling author and physician Deepak Chopra told the crowd that the children-helping-children movement is the key to putting an end to poverty and the exploitation of youth.

“This energy, this idealism will transform the world,” Chopra said.

“You are the ones that will help create a peaceful, just, sustainable and healthy world . . . You are the change that you want to see in the world.”

Deepak Choprah--isn't he the "guru" who once opined that "The burden of a civilized society is to tolerate the intolerable," and "The West created Israel by fiat in 1948 without consulting the Arabs?" Yeah, let's expose impressionable young minds to his shtick. And compelling young'uns to sit through all the "inspirational" hokum: child abuse, pure and simple.

Along with the CIC, other sponsors of the month-long shill-fest, include:

Islamic Circle of North America-Canada (ICNA), Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC), the Canadian Muslim Forum (CMF), the Muslim Council of Montreal (MCM), Canadian Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), the Coalition of Muslim Organization (COMO), the Ottawa Muslim Association (OMA), the Human Concern International (HCI), the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF), the High Commission and the Government of Malaysia, AlBukhary Foundation and the law firms of McCarthy Tétrault, Philips & Vineberg, Michel W. Drapeau Law Firm, Quadra Systems Corporation as well as many Canadian and international corporations and individuals, both financially and in-kind, too many to list...

Some past "generous sponsors": the Islamic Development Bank, an establishment that's big into sharia financing; the Embassy of the Republic of Yemen, a country that's big into jihad; and the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, like Yemen a member of the modern-day caliphate, the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

I have no doubt that all these lovely folks seek merely to educate us about the sheer wonderfulness of Islam such that we'll feel warm and tingly from head to toe, and that none harbours so much as a trace of a desire to insert sharia into our body politic by stealth.

Update: Some annual events that have not been declared by the current government (or any other previous government): Hinduism History Month, Jewish History Month, Catholic History Month, Lutheran History Month, Mormon History Month, Buddhist History Month, Wiccan History Month, Seventh Day Adventism History Month...

Update: Keynote speaker at the upcoming Department of National Defense Islamic History Month event, the CIC's Dr. Iman Zijad Delic, 'splained back in '07 that "Free Speech Has Limits." Sure 'nuff, imam--"limits" under sharia and "limits" under Canadian "human rights" legislation, both of which mesh together quite nicely.

Both secular and religious havetaken to the streets in Karachi, Pakistan, a-seethin' and a-ragin' because one of their own--a "38-year-old MIT-educated mother of three" who "grabbed a soldier’s M-4 assault rifle and, shouting 'Death to America,' attacked the U.S. team who had come to question her at an Afghan compound in Ghazni, Afghanistan in July 2008"--was just sentenced by a kafir court (in Manhattan) to 86 years in the slammer.

"The Tea Party calls upon our representatives to limit the government's role in everyday life, and to support people and businesses, but not demand from, control or over tax the people or businesses," says one page, accompanied by an American flag for children to colour in. "The government should never become a burden in our lives."

Sounds good to me. Think I'll get our my crayons (now, where did I put those things?).

According to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, employees with young children are, because they have the "right" to tell an employer who wants them to transfer them to shove it and still be able retain their jobs. Darcy Henton in the National Post has the story:

Edmonton - The Canadian Human Rights Commission has declared young parents have a right not to move, in a decision that orders the Canadian National Railway to rehire three women fired for refusing to transfer to another province.

The ruling, issued yesterday, says parents with young children are protected from discrimination under the rights act, and could have widespread implications for other employers. "We are now looking forward to working with CN and other federally regulated employers to implement the principles arising out of this decision," said commission spokeswoman Suzanne Sauve-Hiron.

The CN case involves three women who all cited family reasons for being unable to relocate from Jasper, Alta., for temporary postings in Vancouver in 2005. Kasha Whyte, Denise Seeley and Cindy Richards all lost their jobs.

So now asking people with kids to transfer temporarily is considered "discrimination"? Is it just me, or is this ever-expanding category broadening to the point where it has nothing to do with "discrimination" but has become an excuse for and a way to disguise a Marxist form of power redistribution?

Ten years after the death of Pierre Trudeau, the National Post surveys the wreckage of his well-intentioned but observably insidious initiatives:

...He imagined that multiculturalism would unify us in our diversity -- although he never explained how that logical oxymoron was supposed to occur. Instead, multiculturalism has led to divisive ethnopolitics and political correctness dictating national immigration and refugee policy.

Human rights commissions are also part of his legacy, as is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which enshrined important individual liberties, but also authorized judges to "read in" new rights. Special interest groups, backed by funding Mr. Trudeau put in place for court challenges, quickly learned they could use Charter-empowered judges to force changes in Canadian society that they never could have won through free elections.

The CRTC -- the agency that for decades has tried to tell us what we may watch on television and listen on radio --is also a Trudeau creation.

But as bad as that litany is, it is probably to the economy that Mr. Trudeau did the most damage. Inflation, national debt, lost opportunities due to protectionism and economic nationalism -- he left us all of these...

To recap: he is the game-changer responsible for a battery of malign measures that froze us in a rictus of over-regulation, trashed our more precious freedom--free speech (a loss he thought we might not notice since he were too distracted making whoopee in our bedrooms, which he assured us were off limits to state instrusion), and fatally compromised our social fabric via idiotic multiculturalism, which, speaking metaphorically, has turned out to be both an Achilles heel and a Trojan horse. (Would that it were at least a Trojan Horse with an Achilles heel.)

The US says that it is “disappointed” that Israel has not extended the ban on settlement building that expired on Sunday night.

This is repugnant language. More settlements are the line in the sand for the Palestinians, and Washington ought to know it by now. It has been told often enough. There can be no meaningful negotiations, let alone peace, if while they are going on, the Israelis are stealing more Palestinian land and building new facts on the ground.

How about being “appalled” or “shocked” or “outraged”? That is what Palestinians and Arabs feel about the moratorium ending but not the talks. That is what the Americans should have said. But no. For the Obama administration it is just “disappointed.” Such a lukewarm response shows exactly where Washington’s sentiments lie. For President Barack Obama, the settlements are only a problem because the Palestinians say they are, not because Obama sees them as inherently wrong.

That is why he is not prepared to make a stand on the issue, why he thinks it is one where compromises can be made. But how can there be compromises on an issue that is at the heart of the dispute? At it’s most fundamental, the Palestinian-Israel problem is about land that has been seized and turned into a Jewish state. The settlements issue is the problem in microcosm. The Palestinians are desperate for peace, but not peace at any price. How can they talk peace while their land is still being stolen?

The fact that Obama is prepared to participate in this chicanery destroys confidence in his good intentions. He is revealed as partisan. He is not prepared to put the pressure on the Israelis on this critical issue. That is because he knows that the Israeli government will probably fall if Netanyahu agrees. He fears it could cause a backlash among Israel’s supporters and the Jewish community in the US. With midterm elections just weeks away and his own popularity severely dented, the last thing he wants to do is antagonize the Zionist lobby. For him and his administration, domestic political considerations come first. Getting Democrats re-elected is more important than peace in the Middle East...

A favourite device of Thomas L. Friedman is to posit opposites, one, naturally, being superior to and much more desirable than the other. Hence, according to Tom's lame shtick, it's much better to be a Jetson than a Flintstone. Today Tom riffs on new set of opposites--the semi-comendable "Tea Party Movement" and the totally crappy "Tea Kettle Movement," an entity that exists soley in Friedman's satire-challenged mind:

There are actually two Tea Party movements in America today: one you’ve read about that is not that important and one you’ve not read about that could become really important if the right politician understood how to tap into it.

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” — because all it’s doing is letting off steam.

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be). But affecting elections and affecting America’s future are two different things. Based on all I’ve heard from this movement, it feels to me like it’s all steam and no engine. It has no plan to restore America to greatness.

The Tea Kettle movement can’t have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America’s main problem and hasn’t even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified. How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services it’s ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?...

No need for specifics at this stage, Tom, since the movement--the one movement, not the two you've confabulated--is committed to rolling back Obama's outrageous spendaholism.

From a full page letter to readers in today's Globe and Mail announcing the paper's redesign:

At the Globe, we strive to inspire conversation and shape national debate by addressing the issues that matter to you most, and those that impact this country. This fresh chapter in the Globe's history will kick off with an eight-week series titled "Canada: Our Time to Lead."

Wow. Can't wait to read that. It sounds as compelling as the current batch of "issues" the Globe has placed front and centre--the long gun registry and the long form census standoff--and every bit as riveting as punchline of the old joke about the (made up) book title Americans voted the most boring one ever: "Canada, Our Northern Neighbor." Sounds to me like the fuddy-duddy Globe is looking to retool itself into, well, a facsimile of the Toronto Star, the nation's foremost "progressivist" rag. I guess we can look forward to much more in the Star's "activist" vein--pro-Palestinian screeds, anti-American/Western "news," a squishy multiculti and eco-hysteria ethos, and genuflections to "Islam, the religion of peace"--in the all "new" Globe (though, shockeroo, sans Rick Salutin, who appears to be a casualty of the "change").

In Europe protesters are decrying recent austerity measures because they want tapped out governments to spend, spend, spend. In the U.S. an entire movement has sprung up to protest the feds' spending lunatic, out-of-control spending, demanding the government cut, cut, cut.

A-jad's recent week long stay at a New York hotel wasn't a whole lot of fun--for the hotel:

Paranoia was on parade at the Hilton the moment the president checked in on Saturday, Sept. 18. His team took six floors to themselves in the hotel's south tower, overlooking Tudor City, about 90 rooms in all. More than 20 were just for security.

Still, Ahmadinejad, who wore the same tacky suit and shirt all week, took every precaution. He never set foot in the lobby. Bulletproof glass was installed over room windows. When he left for meetings at the Iranian Mission, on Third Avenue, or the United Nations, he departed by an employee entrance, the path covered in a white tent -- a veritable tunnel to his vehicle. His head was covered with a white cloth. No one saw him on the street.

The entourage dined in but not on room service. Meals -- mostly lamb, shish kebabs, spiced ground meat and basmati rice -- were prepared by a Persian restaurant and carried in by Secret Service agents.

In the past, writes Caroline Glick, Israel's Left has styled itself as the happy-dappy, hopey-changey faction, the folks who efferversce with fizzy, giddy dreams about the "peace" that lies just over the rainbow. Now that the harsh reality of an intractable jihad has set in and put something of a damper on their par-tay, Glick says the Left has replaced "hope" with "mope":

...By the time the peace process was a year old, the image of the suicide bomber had begun to eclipse the image of the balloon-festooned peace the Left sought to embody.

It was at this time that the Left could have been expected to reconsider its commitment to the peace process. But that is not what happened. The Left maintained absolute allegiance to the phony peace process. It simply ditched hope.

Quietly but relentlessly, the Left replaced hope for a better future with fear of a terrible future. Specifically, Leftist leaders like Haim Ramon began threatening their countrymen with national demographic destruction.

Ramon seized upon falsified Palestinian demographic forecasts. He and his comrades used the data - which inflated the number of Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip by 50 percent - to threaten their countrymen with encroaching demographic doom.

True, transferring land to the PLO had turned out to be a very bad idea. True life had been better and safer before the fake peace process.

But, the Left warned, if we didn't retreat to the 1949 armistice lines anyway, Jews would become a minority in our country within 15 years.

It took much longer for the demographic time bomb to be exposed as a dud than for the peace fantasy to explode. Indeed, Ramon's Kadima Party still bases its surrender platform on the phony PLO population data...

Having been exposed as a dud years ago--by Yoram Ettinger, among others--has the Left moved on from the time bomb delusion? Heck, no! Why, even an American hopeychanger has glommed on to it as an excuse to claim it's now or never for "peace" between Jews and intransigent Islamic supremacists (a heading that covers both Hamas and Abbas). This bit from a Reuters report about Obama's UN address last week reveals that the Left's pernicious demography argument is alive and kicking:

Obama touted the direct negotiations his administration has pursued between Israelis and Palestinians.

"Last year, I pledged my best efforts to support the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, as part of a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors. We have traveled a winding road over the last 12 months, with few peaks and many valleys."

He scoffed at pessimism over the process and warned of the alternative if there is no peace agreement, saying the "hard realities of demography will take hold."

If you begin with a false premise--that true peace, peace as the West understands it, is possible with those who view Jewish sovereignty through an Islamic lens; that a harsh demographic reality is in the offing--you will inevitably bollocks things up, as Obama is doing quite well, thank you very much.

If you want to know what's what in this world, you won't find it in the mainstream media; as David Solway points out, that avenue is superficial, insipid, and for the most part has a lefist axe to grind. No, if you're looking for true insight about our troubled, Islamified times, says Solway, you're far more likely to find it in France. It's there that a retinue of writers, the "Nouveaux Philosophes," some but not all of them Jewish, has taken up the challenge to explain what's afoot:

This distinguished cohort boasts some of the most astute writers and commentators on the predicament in which the West now finds itself. Among the most prominent members are André Glucksmann, generally regarded as the father-doyen of the group, Alain Finkielkraut, Shmuel Trigano, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Pascal Bruckner. Although their sources, methods, specific subjects and lines of attack may differ, they are all united in confronting what they intuit as the imminent collapse of the West.

Glucksmann is concerned with what he calls “the Somalization of the planet” and the Western tendency “to sleep peacefully” before the looming threat of a reinvigorated Islam, which “puts us all in jeopardy” (City Journal). Finkielkraut sees the swelling tide of antisemitism as a sure sign of a coming civilizational catastrophe. His seminal texts, The Imaginary Jew and The Defeat of the Mind, make essential reading. In Left in Dark Times, Lévy (who coined the term by which the group is known) retains a nostalgic allegiance to the “old left’s” commitment to “social justice” but excoriates the simple-mindedness, facile utopianism, self-infatuation and futile search for transcendence which characterizes the “new left.” (Though how this differs from the “old left” is an open question.) We might say that the terms “social justice,” “diversity,” “accommodation” and “egalitarianism” bandied about by the left comprise an averting rhetoric meant to protect an obsolete and defective world-view, like installing a car alarm in a Trabant.

Trigano takes a somewhat different tack, analyzing the Jewish proclivity to self-betrayal as a way of dodging “la mauvaise foi planétaire”—“the planetary bad faith” represented by antisemitism (Controverse, numero 10). As he writes in his le temps de l’exil, “Une lumière s’étaint dans le monde” (“A light is extinguished in the world”). Curiously and somewhat incomprehensibly, as if in confirmation of Trigano’s thesis, both Finkielkraut and Lévy have recently joined the new petitionary group JCall with a distinctly anti-Israeli stamp, and have been taken to task by Trigano. “There is something pathetic,” he says, “about seeing political blindness masquerading as moral grandiloquence…Israel has become the screen onto which Europe projects all its problems and its failure to face up to the challenges at hand.”

Nevertheless, in spite of their pessimism and their differences, these writers continue to struggle against that which they fear may well be inevitable. This is particularly true of Bruckner who, in my estimation, is one of the most compelling and prescient of the cadre of French intellectuals...

Police in central Florida say a man dressed as the "Sesame Street" character was attacked Saturday at a music store in Winter Park, but he was able to fend off the attacker.

The fight broke out around 3 p.m. The costumed man had been hired to perform as Elmo at a children's event at Guitar Center, but police say the attacker began throwing punches at Elmo.

The performer fought back, even breaking a few fingers on his attacker's hand.

Police haven't released the names of either man. Officers broke up the fight and took the attacker to the hospital, where he was treated and detained for a mental health evaluation. Police say Elmo was unhurt, and that no children saw the fight.

Richard Cohen has figured it out but Kay and Clement have both jumped down the rabbit hole? The world grows e'er wackier, my friends.

Update: Cohen must have had a sudden epiphany because a few short days ago he was sounding quite Abbasian, writes Melanie Phillips (who has absolutely no patience for the "settlements" blarney):

How can the settlement freeze be the make or break issue when, during the ten months that the freeze was on, Abbas refused to negotiate at all with Israel.

How can the settlements be the make or break issue when the Palestinian response to the forced removal of the settlers from Gaza was not peace but war?

How can the disputed territories be the issue when Israel has twice now offered to give up more than 90 per cent of these territories to the Palestinians, only for them to refuse it twice point blank (and in 2000 start a campaign of terrorist murder against Israel instead?)

Why is Israel blamed for xenophobic and religious nationalism when Abbas has said repeatedly that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state? Why isn’t he blamed for xenophobia and religious fanaticism?

Why is Israel blamed for ignoring civil rights when the Palestinians -- along with the Observer, Roger Cohen and all who want every last settler out of the territories -- are campaigning for the ethnic cleansing of every single Jew from a future state of Palestine?

How can Salaam Fayad be ‘very serious’ about peace with Israel when he stormed out of a meeting with Israel’s deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon after Ayalon refused to approve a summary of the meeting which said ‘two states’ but did not include the words ‘two states for two peoples’ – a walk-out that tells us that even the supposedly super-moderate Fayad refuses to accept that the goal is the ‘two state solution’?

Oh, Melanie. There you go again deploying reason and cogency in the face of the irrational. By all means keep it up!

In the ongoing 'toon wars, I know who I'm siding with: those brave 'toonists who dare to defy Islamic codes of blasphemy and defend the Western tradition of freedom, one which often involves taking the mickey out of the pompous, the priggish, the sanctimonious and the self-important. That puts me at odds with the most prominent Jewish organization in Canada, which has decided to stand with a Francophone 'toonist who seems to have a unfortunate propensity for drawing Jewish stars in compromisingpositions, and who took part in a UN 'tooning effort--Cartoonists for Peace--of which the Jewish outfit wholeheartedly approves.

A quick gander at the Cartoonists for Peace website reveals that it came about in response to those "blasphemous" Motoons. As such, it is an execrable exercise in dhimmitude which all lovers of freedom--true freedom, not the PC/UN/OIC version--should shun.

The terrorist threat against the United States continues to evolve in ways that present more complicated and dangerous challenges than we have faced in the past. We cannot guarantee that there will never be another terrorist attack, and we cannot seal our country under a glass dome. But we can do everything in our power to prevent attacks, confront the terrorist threat head-on, and secure our country.

That's going to be rather a tall order, given that nowhere in her statement, nor in the DHS worldview in general, is there any acknowlegement of Islam and its doctrines of jihad as a motivating factor in terrorism.

I was going to write about my stab at reading Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom--an attempt that ended around a third of the way through when the author's political leanings/Bush Derangement Syndrome became too much to bear. But now it looks like I don't have to, since this book review pretty much sums it up re the over-hyped book's overall crappiness.

Just when you thought the United Nations could not possibly become any more inane, out comes a story in London’s Sunday Times that the UN is about to appoint a special envoy for alien life forms. The idea, apparently, is that if aliens contact or land on earth, demanding “Take me to your leader,” the UN will have a designated official ready to step in as chief mouthpiece for the human race.

My first guess is that this close encounter of a UN kind would end swiftly, and not well. Imagine, for a moment, that you are an alien arriving on earth, curious about the ways of homo sapiens — and your first real sitdown is with a member of the UN bureaucracy. Either you’d speed back into space, howling: “The horror! The horror!” Or, if you’re an alien of strong stomach and advanced weaponry, you’d listen just long enough to conclude that earthlings have arrived at some endpoint of blithering and irredeemable decay, and zap them wholesale off the planet. Either way, there’s really no need for a UN-alien interface. The question we ought to be asking is how many U.S. taxdollars the UN plans to lavish on this new arrangement...

The stairs leading to Rolanda Delerme’s basement open onto a dazzling tableau: Pink and green feathers in jars, sequined bottles, a life-sized mannequin holding a knife, altars packed with Catholic saints.

“Welcome,” the voodoo priestess says, dressed in a headdress and flowing white robes.

Voodoo temples such as this are said to have thrived for years in the homes of Haitian émigrés in Montreal, hidden from the judging eyes of outsiders. But now devotees have started a movement to bring voodoo and its rituals out of the shadows.

“I want to open my door. I want to tell people: We exist. We are not devil worshippers,” said Ms. Delerme, a fourth-generation voodoo priestess, or mambo, who was born in Haiti but lived in the U.S. before settling in Montreal.

“We want to defend our culture and traditions,” she said in her home on an ordinary suburban street in Montreal’s West Island. “Voodoo is still being stigmatized.”...

A boy on a box, covered in a black cloak and hood — his fingers wired with electrodes. A nearly-nude handcuffed boy, eyes screaming in terror as a stuffed dog wraps around his waist.

Abu Ghraib, 9/11 — meet the playroom.

A new series of controversial photographs from artist Jonathan Hobin, called In the Playroom, brings the headlines into the supposedly safe, carefree space of childhood playtime.

“I want people to acknowledge the fact that kids see the scariest things that are out there,” said Hobin of the exhibit, which among other notorious events, includes depictions of Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, and the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

Hobin, who studied photography at Ryerson, said the photos are intended to tear down to (sic) illusion that, in a media-saturated world, children can be sheltered...

Quel relief that's what they were going for, eh? To my untrained, Philistine eye they look an awful lot like child abuse.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

It seems like only yesterday that boats full of Jews were turned away from various ports, thereby consigning the passengers to a death sentence when they either sunk or were forced to return to Nazi-controlled Europe. Today, of course, Jews have no need to seek refuge in a boat--unless they're a shipload of Jewish Quislings who wish to do dirt to the Jewish state even as they score a P.R. victory for Hamas, the Nazis of our time. Here's a report about a ship of Jewish fools who have just set sail for Gaza:

A boat carrying aid for Gaza’s population and organized by Jewish groups worldwide has set sail from Cyprus today at 13:32 local time.

The boat, Irene, is sailing under a British flag and is carrying ten passengers and crew, including Jews from the US, the UK, Germany and Israel as well as an Israeli journalist.

The boat’s cargo includes symbolic aid in the form of children’s toys and musical instruments, textbooks, fishing nets for Gaza’s fishing communities and prosthetic limbs for orthopaedic medical care in Gaza’s hospitals.

The receiving organization in Gaza is The Palestinian International Campaign to end the siege on Gaza, directed by Dr. Eyad Sarraj and Amjad Shawa, Director of PNGO

The boat will attempt to reach the coast of Gaza and unload its aid cargo in a nonviolent, symbolic act of solidarity and protest – and call for the siege to be lifted to enable free passage of goods and people to and from the Gaza Strip.

The boat will fly multicolored peace flags carrying the names of dozens of Jews who have expressed their support for this action, as a symbol of the widespread support for the boat by Jews worldwide.

Speaking from London, a member of the organizing group, Richard Kuper of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, said today that the Jewish Boat to Gaza is a symbolic act of protest against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the siege of Gaza, and a message of solidarity to Palestinians and Israelis who seek peace and justice.

‘Israeli government policies are not supported by all Jews,’ said Kuper. ‘We call on all governments and people around the world to speak and act against the occupation and the siege.’

Regarding the threat of interception by the Israeli navy, Kuper said ‘This is a nonviolent action. We aim to reach Gaza, but our activists will not engage in any physical confrontation and will therefore not present the Israelis with any reason or excuse to use physical force or assault them.’

Passenger Reuven Moskovitz, 82, said that his life’s mission has been to turn foes into friends. “We are two peoples, but we have one future”, he said.

Funny, that's kind of what the highly assimilated Jews of Germany used to say--before their discovered to their horror that, in fact, Hitler had entirely different plans for them than he did for the regular "pure" Germans. Or have these great "humanitarians" never bothered to read the Hamas Charter? (I would note that if all these "Jewish groups worldwide" could manage to attract was less than ten protesters, you couldn't exactly count it a roaring success.)

A boat full of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and other such organizations is setting sail today for Gaza from Northern Cyprus, as reported here. The pious group, no doubt, thinks they are fighting occupation through acts of kindness.

There is, nevertheless, a certain irony in the fact that they use Northern Cyprus as a staging ground for their activities — like the Mavi Marmara-led Flotilla did last May. Here’s the irony — Northern Cyprus is an illegally occupied territory that belongs to the EU as part of its member state, Cyprus; it was seized by force in 1974 by the Turkish army; its legal status as a fictionally independent state is only recognized by Turkey (the occupying power); Turkey forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks from that territory and settled its own population to permanently alter the ethnic balance of the area – and, in the process, encouraged the building of what one could characterize as settlements.

Now doesn’t this sound awfully familiar — the kind of accusations that organizations such as the JFJFP would routinely level at Israel’s presence in the West Bank and, until 2005, in Gaza? These are the kind of things that get such enlightened Jews agitated enough that they need to spring into action — if the alleged perpetrator is Israel. If it is a country that bombs neighbors with impunity, uses heavy-handed tactics to fight what it brands as terrorists, while denying basic cultural rights to the ethnic minority that constitutes 20 percent of its population while it practices state-sanctioned genocide denial, well then, its government is Islamist and its actively helps Hamas, so there’s no problem relying on their services and glossing on (sic) their blatant and continuing violations of international law to bash Israel.

The head of the Quebec branch of the Ceej responds to accusations that serial-Jewish-star-drawer, cartoonist Guy Badeaux (pen name Bado), is antisemitic, viewing them as a personal affront to--wait for it--himself. (The letter to the editor appeared in Bado's Le Doit and was translated from the French by google):

Let me hereby to express my surprise and sadness at the controversy surrounding the publication of caricatures of the LeDroit Bado of 20 September. Prétendre que cette caricature à un caractère antisémite relève de la mauvaise foi. Claim that an anti-Semitic cartoon is in bad faith. Suspecter Guy Badeaux de racisme insulte non seulement l'auteur de la caricature mais ceux qui ont le privilège de le côtoyer. Guy Badeaux suspicion of racism not only insult the author of the cartoon but those who have the privilege of knowing him.

This mock trial is a true friend shocks us by its injustice and its free. Guy Badeaux has often drawn the Canadian Parliament with the star found the clock on the Peace Tower. Why do those who accuse today have never responded before?

Judaism is not a matter of faith, "said Franz Kafka is also a matter of social practice. Accusing baseless and without a shred of evidence a man known for his honesty and integrity goes against the fundamental values of Judaism.

Guy Badeaux has always stood by the courage of his opinions, the appropriateness of its actions and sense of nuance. As a community, his cartoons have often provoked, sometimes angry - that is the price of freedom of expression - but never insulted. He sketched in from the perspective of the heart to help us speak when words are silent. Quebec Jewish Congress has also had the opportunity to organize a series of events to promote dialogue and respect for others, as part of the "Action Week against Racism 2009". Alongside fellow Canadian, French and Israeli Guy Badeaux had risen brilliantly against all forms of intolerance. With its ironic pencil strokes, he sketched the fanatics who threaten our planet and brushed the edges of an open society and pluralistic. Making use of words and his pen, he had claimed more than 200 guests gathered in a synagogue in Montreal in designing a message of peace, tolerance and hope.

If, however, this evidence proved unable to convince your readers the honor of our friend Bado, then I also claim the right to be considered an anti-Semite.

Stirring words, indeed. Perhaps a bit de trop, as they say in French, but rousing nonetheless. Would that the Ceej had been willing to stand foursquare with those famed Danish 'toonists (which, alas, it was not, slamming their Motoons for being "inexcusably provocative"), or with, say, Mark Steyn when his "ironic pen" was put on trial by a Kafkaësque totalitarian court in B.C. But then, they never "claimed more than 200 guests gathered in a synagogue in Montreal in designing a message of peace, tolerance and hope"--so what good are they? (BTW, Swedish Motoonist, Lars Vilks, will be in town next week.) As for moi, I guess I must be a really bad Jew for pointing out that, while Bado may be gung ho for multiculturalisme and "anti-racism" (and, hey, can you name me a lefty who isn't?),he seems to have it in for Star of David-land.

'President Ahmadinejad is entitled to believe in, and regurgitate, whatever intellectual, philosophical or theological concoctions his unique mind may fabricate...

'However, I do not agree that any one of us should disregard basic rules and practices of conduct among leaders and utter obscenities in this august assembly.'

Was it Barack Obama? Don't be silly. He would never say anything so forceful and clear, so "un-nuanced." No, this Churchillian pronouncement was uttered by the president of tiny East Timor, who, unlike Obama, isn't a mealy-mouthed outreacher looking to keep the door open for "negotiations" with nuke-making madmen.

Tom Friedman put me in an unusual position--agreeing with him--for the first part of his latest NYT peroration, yet another love letter to China's industriousness:

China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers — from America — giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country’s leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities. In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.

This contrast is not good...

So far, so good--as long as you disregard the fact that China can crush foes, including Uighurs, at will, so Muslim terrorists are disinclined to mess with them, while the USA, a democracy, can and does do no such thing. But no matter. Here (in bolds) is where Tom lost me:

I was recently at a Washington Nationals baseball game. While waiting for a hot dog, I overheard the conversation behind me. A management consultant for a big national firm was telling his colleagues that his job was to “market products to the Department of Homeland Security.” I thought to myself: “Oh, my! Inventing studies about terrorist threats and selling them to the U.S. government, is that an industry now?”

Oh, my! Does Tom really think terrorist threats are being manufactured and marketed like, say, his beloved electric cars? If so, he's even more clueless than I suspected.

I don't know about you but I've had it up to here with shedding copious tears over and sentimentalizing particular trees--whether it's the great chestnut that Anne Frank gazed upon while in hiding, a sapling of which has been taken from the now defunct trunk and will be planted with much ceremony in Montreal, or those lost olive groves in "Palestine." Boo-hooing over "Anne's tree" is easy-peasy, especially at a time when the next Shoah looms and nothing much is being done to prevent it. And those lost olive trees--like the totemic keys they haul out every year at "naqba" time--are PR weapons in the Zion-loathers' arsenal. Let me know when Mahmoud A-jad renounces Shiite supremacism and buys a grove in a JNF forest because then, and only then, will I be prepared to shed tears (of joy and relief) over vegetation.

As long as America provides such toys as the United Nations, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might as well play with them — and this week, again, play he did.

Ahmadinejad has just treated himself to quite a week at the UN — speaking Tuesday at a planet-wide central planning “development” summit, and again on Thursday in the starting lineup of the General Assembly debate. He has used his UN access to Manhattan to dispense TV interviews, from ABC to CNN. He has hosted media gatherings and met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Ahmadinejad created this year’s special stir by using the UN podium to peddle propaganda about the 9/11 Islamist attacks, telling the world that a majority of Americans believe that “some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to also save the Zionist regime.”

And at the UN, where Iran’s regime is in brazen violation of four Security Council sanctions resolutions on its nuclear program, officials have been falling all over themselves to make Ahmadinejad welcome. Friday’s Jerusalem Post carried a mind-bending story on “The ‘Zionist regime’ enters the UN’s Iranian underworld,” by an American reporter, Jordana Horn, who is accredited by the UN to cover this year’s General Assembly opening for the Jerusalem Post. Horn recounts how on Thursday she tried to attend an Ahmadinejad press conference — on UN premises. Let’s be clear about that: This was not at Ahmadinejad’s five-star hotel. This was on UN turf, where Iran’s regime so amply avails itself of the equal dignity accorded in theory to all nations. But in this case, Iran called the shots, and the UN fawned and scraped along. Horn was kicked out of the room, when Ahmadinejad’s security detail discovered she worked for the Jerusalem Post, a newspaper of the “Zionist entity.”...

The UN seems to have enacted a version of Hitler's Nuremburg Laws excluding Jewry--and on America's dime, yet.

Wonder what the UN's "human rights" racket has been up to lately? It appears to have taken time off from its usual agenda of slandering the Jewish state to focus on an "annual discussion on the integration of a gender perspective in (its) work." Here's the skinny--in deliciously clunky diplomacy-speak--from the UNHRC site:

MORNING
24 September 2010
The Human Rights Council this morning held its annual discussion on the integration of a gender perspective in its work. The panel discussed how well the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms had integrated a gender perspective into their work, and identified lessons-learned, obstacles, shortcomings and challenges to the integration of a gender perspective throughout the work of the Council.

Introducing the panel discussion, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-Wha Kang said the theme of today's discussion tied in very well with the review of the work of the Council, to be undertaken over the next few months. In order to properly internalise a gender perspective, and make it an integral part of the work done, there was a need to be prepared to embrace profound change, and this must be actively fostered. Attention to the goal of gender equality had to be central to all activities - policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects. The establishment of a new mechanism on discriminatory laws and practices would be a further step in the Council's work to strengthen the protection of women's rights per se, and would also contribute to an analysis which would underpin further gender integration, Ms. Kang concluded.

Panellist Emmanuel Decaux, Member of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, said that even if the Advisory Committee was far from being gender balanced, all its members were mobilized by the question of integrating a gender perspective in the work of the Council. The Council asked the Advisory Committee to set up draft guidelines on ways to improve gender mainstreaming in the work of the Council, which did not come to immediate fruition. Mr. Decaux reiterated the need to look at the qualitative side of women’s rights and not just the quantitative statistics, strengthen the complementarity of all United Nations bodies working on the issue of gender equality and incorporate a gender perspective into all United Nations Agencies, not just in New York and Geneva but also in the field...

Yawn. You'd never know from reading this high-toned bilge than the Council and the UN are in thrall to regimes which hew to laws that enshrine inequality and accord chicks a second-class status.

A ditty the celebrants (seen here) will be singing during tonight's Fast Boat to Gaza fundraiser:

Jews go! Jew-ew-ews go!Day will come when we float dat boa-oat. Jews, me say Jews, me say Jews, me say Jews,Me say Jews, me say Jew-ew-ews go!Day will come when we float dat boat.Dance all night, eat a nice buffet.(Day will come when we float dat boa-oat.)Den we pray five times a day.(Day will come when we float dat boa-oat.)Come, Mister Galloway, don't call him bananas.(Day will come when we float dat boa-oat.)Come, Mister Galloway, don't call him bananas.(Day will come when we float dat boa-oat.)...

As an aside, when I googled for the lyrics, the site I clicked on had this disclaimer: "This song is considered sensitive and may contain lyrics that cause offensive (sic) to some people. Please speak to a parent or guardian for further help." No can do since "offensive" is what I aim for in my songs.

Israel’s destructive habit of permitting the building of Jewish settlements on occupied territories, were it to resume when the moratorium ends on Sunday, threatens to doom the fragile present round of talks. Such a result would feed the Palestinian cult of victimization, which thrives on the characterization of Israel as unyielding and aggressive, and casts Mr. Netanyahu as an untrustworthy partner in peace.

Got that? The "settlers," our era's biggest bogeyman/red herring, the Jewiest of Jewish scapegoats, are feeding the "cult of victimization."

Funny, I always though what doomed things was the Palestinians' destructive habit of failing to come through on any "peace" conditions/road maps, along with a destructive habit of wanting to deconstruct Jewish settlement in and sovereignty over Israel (which, pace the clueless Globe, is the real stumbling block to peace).

Update: The Arab "cult of victimization" is hardly a recent phenomenon. In fact it goes waaay back, as Mark Durie observes in his book The Third Way (my current read):

One of the themes of Muhammad's program was an emphasis on the victimhood of Muslims. To sustain the theological position that conquest is liberation, it becomes necessary to seek grounds to find the infidel enemy guilty and deserving of attack. Also, the more extreme the punishment, the more necessary it becomes to insist upon the enemy's guilt. Since, by divine decree Muslims' sufferings were 'worse than slaughter,' it became obligatory for Muslims to regard their victimhood as greater than whatever they inflicted upon their enemies. The greater victimhood became a doctrinal necessity, a feature of the 'compass of faith' for Muslims.

I can't even begin to fathom the psychology of Jews who aid and abet the enemy, but it seems to me there's some weird masochism/longing for martyrdom afoot here:

TORONTO, Sept. 23 /CNW Telbec/ - Canada's largest river showboat, the Jubilee Queen, has been chartered for an evening dedicated to supporting a Canadian humanitarian voyage to Gaza.

On Saturday Sept. 25, a sunset cruise on Lake Ontario aboard the "Queen" will raise funds for a Canadian mission as part of the Free Gaza Flotilla Movement in the eastern Mediterranean. "This will give people the taste of being on the boat although the trip to Gaza is not expected to be enjoyable in the same way this evening promises to be," said Sandra Ruch, of the Canadian Boat to Gaza steering committee.

The Sept. 25 Toronto fundraiser is part of a growing cross-country effort to send a Canadian ship with the next international flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, which restricts entry of materials into Gaza and does not allow any exports to leave. In May, Israeli commandoes stormed a Free Gaza flotilla in international waters, killing nine on board a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara.

Similar fundraising efforts are underway in cities across Canada. The Canadian Boat to Gaza plans to sail before the end of the year. Our sister project, the Audacity of Hope (the US boat to Gaza) raised over $30,000 US on a similar cruise on the Hudson River...

Hey, why not call the Canucki boat the Audacity of Masochism? As for the "Martyr Party"--wasn't that a Rick Nelson song?

I went to a martyr partyTo schmooze and eat with my new friends.A chance to lambaste Is-ra-elAnd make it make amends.When I got to the martyr party,They all knew my name.No one criticized me--They simply think the same.But it's alright now,I learned my lesson well.You see you can't please the "virtuous"Unless you're bashing Is-ra-el...

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.